


The Confession II

by Akita



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 08:19:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6110629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akita/pseuds/Akita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kalinda reveals her past</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Confession II

Kalinda takes a long look at Alicia, sighs, then begins.

"My parents were from Kerala, on the southwest coast of India. They were actually well off by Indian standards but when my mother got pregnant, they talked of moving. My uncle Puna lived in Canada and was always bragging about his life there, so my parents made the decision to move. My mother said that my dad didn't trust uncle Puna because he always wanted to borrow money, so instead of selling everything, they decided to keep the house and business in India, as something to fall back on in case things didn't work out.

"My mother told my father that 'there are two goals in life: one should try to achieve moksa (liberation) for oneself, then try to achieve the good of the whole world. There is no tranquility for the person who does not perservere in the pursuit of moksa and without tranquility, how can there be happiness? I think happiness can be pursued more easily in Canada.'

"Mama used to quote all sorts of Indian wise men, taking what they said at face value, never thinking that their wise council could be interpreted in a deeper more philosophical way.

"As it turned out, my dad couldn't find a suitable job, so he went back to Kerala to continue his business and mama and I stayed in Canada. Papa owned a houseboat, a 'floating hotel', he called it and he used to take people up river on backwater scenic tours of the lush interior. He and mama were determined to give me a better life."

Kalinda got a wistful look on her face and continued. "My earliest recollection was of sitting on the butcher block island in the kitchen. Mama was kneading the dough for naan. She put a little hunk of dough in my hands and a little bit of flour in a pile in front of me, then we would make our bread. 'Leela, be sure to add enough flour, you don't want your naan to be sticky.' Sometimes my little hands would try to grab her dough...'no, no Leela, keep your hands busy with your own dough and mama will knead her own. It is better for a person to do his own duty, even if imperfectly, than to do another's duty well performed!'"

Smiling, Kalinda said, "she was a great cook, she told me once that she learned to cook to please my father but she continued to try to better herself in this pursuit so that she could prepare my wedding feast. 'Food is the music inside the body Leela.'

"My father came back to Canada once a year for a few weeks durring the rainy season. When I was five he showed up with a huge wooden box. Mama was so excited, she said: 'my girl, look at what your papa has brought us. This is your hope chest. We will put in it all our good wishes for your future happiness. We desire a good marriage for you, like the marriage of your dear papa and mama. We desire that your true love be devoted to you and cherish you forever. Mama will even put in a book of wise sayings and my lucky charm that I wear around my neck so that you may be as lucky in life as I have been.

"The last item to be put in my hope chest was my wedding sari. Papa brought it home at the end of July when I was 15, three days later they were both dead. It was ruled an accident with suspicious circumstances. I swore that one day I would reopen their case and try to find out what really happened to them."

Kalinda didn't want to but she burst into tears, she was sobbing and trembling so badly that Alicia was concernef for her well being. She took Kalinda's hand and pulled her onto her lap then enfolded her in her arms.

"Please Alicia," Kalinda sobs forlornly, "you might not want to..." "Shhh, hush now, it's okay, shhh, just relax for a bit and catch your breath, I'm here for you", says Alicia as she rocks back and forth while stroking Kalinda's hair.

Kalinda is so emotional right now, she melts into Alicia's warm embrace...laying her head on Alicia's strong shoulder, she proceeds to cry her eyes out while praying that they will still be friends at the end of the day...

"Okay Alicia, I'm calm enough now to continue, you can let me get up now." One glance at the lost look in Kalinda's eyes and Alicia can tell that she is anything but calm. "No Kalinda, you can finish telling me while I hold you." 

Kalinda wanted nothing more than to sit there like that forever, but instead, steels herself while she gets to herfeet and says, "no, please Alicia, I need to get a box of  
tissue anyway."

"Soon you may not want to even look at me let alone hold me."

"My uncle Puna (he was really papa's distant cousin), explained to me that being a single man, he could not take care of me. So he arranged a marriage for me to a man that he owed money to.

"So for the price of a second hand truck, I became the wife of a criminal named Nick Saverese.

"Before I left my house for the last time, I went to my hope chest. It contained the tokens of love that my parents had gathered for me. There was china, silverware, rugs, quilts, my favorite childhood toy, one of the outfits I wore as a baby, my wedding sari...so many lovely things, but All I took with me was a medium sized envelope with a framed photo of me with my parents, this lucky charm that I wear and a little book of indian wisdom that I read all the time.

"Nick, my husband, was a sadistic bastard, especially when he was drunk or stoned. As his addiction to drugs deepened I got better at judging the intensity of his anger.  
I tried to gauge the depth of his displeasure because he liked to slap me, kick me, accuse me of doing vile things, but even though I was successful at recognizing how angry he was, I was powerless to deflect the focus of his rage.

"The last time I saw him, he had just arrived home. I rushed to the door to greet him with a kiss. When I looked into his eyes, my heart sank. 'Oh no,' I thought, 'I'm in big trouble!'

"Leela," he said as he roughly grabbed a hold of my hair and jerked my head back. "Ben is looking pretty damned satisfied today, like a cat who swallowed a canary. Did you blow him? That's the only thing that bastard likes."

"No Nick please, I never did that..., no, no...please, I wouldn't..."

"You stupid bitch, you swallow his jizz, then kiss me?!!"

"I woke up in the hospital. I made a promise to myself that I would never go back to him. I was so afraid of him, I counted myself lucky that he was arrested on a drug  
charge and got sent to prison. While laying in that hospital bed I heard my mother's voice saying, 'Leela, everything is you, everything you want to be you is you.' I knew then that I would be able to gather my wits about me and change my life for the better.

"I wanted Nick's boys to tell him I was dead, so I burned down our house and hitched a ride to Chicago. I paid someone to forge a new set of identification papers and became Kalinda Sharma.

"For a while I did some freelance investigative work, eventually hooking up with the local police as an independent contractor. The State's Attorney's office offered me a job based on evidence I gathered that facilitated a win for them in the prosecution of a drug lord.  
They hired me, but durring the probationary period, they conducted a thorough background check and discovered that my information was bogus."

Kalinda had a hopeless vacant look in her eyes as she spoke. "I was called to your husband's office. He asked me what was going on. He wanted to know why my creds didn't check out. I decided to trust him, I felt I really had no choice. So I told him a little about my life with Nick, about burning down the house and my escape to the United States. I told him that my hope was that I had covered my tracks well enough that Nick would never be able to find me.

"I couldn't believe it but Peter said he would help me." Alicia was so proud of Peter until...

"I didn't know it then, but my identity change would come with strings attached.

"Alicia, when Peter married you, he promised to love you, honor you, to comfort you, to keep you in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, to be true to you and only you for the rest of your life.

"He's a rat bastard Alicia, he broke his vow to you...I would never break that kind of...but he...I mean I..." Kalinda had to fight the tears that were threatening to spill out of her eyes, she had to swallow the lump that was blocking her vocal cords. Shaking her head and turning away from Alicia, she took some calming breaths and continued.

"Two weeks after I put my trust in him, I was called into his office. He held up an envelope and told me that those were my new papers, he said that they would stand up to the most intense scrutiny, unless I decided to work for a secret arm of the Fedral Government. Then he put the envelope in a drawer and closed it.

"It was then that Peter told me he expected me to sleep with him. I knew he was married, so I asked about you. He said that yours was a marriage of convenience. He said that he married you because you came from a family that was well connected and his mother advised him that your union would further his political career. Then he made it clearthat my papers would remain in his drawer until I complied.

"Remember when you told me about your friends and your life before the scandal and how they had deserted you? I told you that I wished that I had known you then...

"Alicia, that was the only time. I didn't know you then, I didn't know how nice you were, how you really cared what happened to people, I never wanted to hurt you." Kalinda cannot contain her tears, her emotions are in turmoil and she is trembling trying to get everything out in the open.

"I am so ashamed and so very, very sorry."

With tears streaming down her face, she says, "I know you told me that if I had known you, that I wouldn't have liked you because you were different then...You were wrong...I would have told Peter to go to hell, I would have gone to prison gladly, I would have let Nick find me, beat me, kill me. I know I would not have done anything to hurt you. 

"Alicia, I love you, you are my best friend, I can't see any happiness in my life without you in it. I know you don't want to hear any more from me, you probably feel like spitting on me and I would deserve it."

"Okay Kalinda, it's my turn," Kalinda has been concentrating so hard trying to confess her sins that she hasn't noticed that Alicia has also been crying.

"I forgive you Kalinda. I can't tell you how much this has meant to me. I know it wasn't easy for you to tell me any of this but I need time to process all of this and to sort some things out."

Alicia stands and wraps her arms around Kalinda. Kalinda can't believe it, Alicia forgives her. She collapses against Alicia and melts in her arms. She is so overcome with emotion that her legs buckle. She trys to quell her sobs and stop trembling so that she can hear what Alicia is saying.

Alicia is speaking softly in her ear. "Kalinda, I love you too, you are my best friend, the best friend I've ever had." They stand there holding eachother until Kalinda asks:

"Alicia, are you free on Saturday, say around 11am?"

"Sure, yeah, I'm free all weekend, Peter has the kids.

"Would you like to come back here to have lunch? We could talk."

"Wha...lunch? Well, okay, yeah, lunch, I'd like that."

As she was leaving, Alicia wondered how Kalinda would pull off their lunch date, she smiled and shook her head, a picnic on the floor perhaps, or maybe they would belly up to the counter.

She keeps going over what Kalinda has told her. Kalinda actually thought she would spit on her. The person she really wants to spit on is Peter, he is so despicable. She will file for divorce tomorrow, then tell the children of her decision.

She made a call to her realtor, then met her at an apartment that she thought was small but suitable, she signed the rental agreement, gave her a check for two months rent, collected the keys, then headed home. 

While Peter was on the campaign trail she packed up all his belongings and moved him in to his new apartment. Then asked him to meet her there. She told him not to bother coming home, she was getting a divorce because he had in effect raped her best friend.

David Lee was only too happy to draw up her divorce papers, but he suggested that it would be better if she waited until after the election to file.

Grace and Zack couldn't understand their mom's change of heart concerning their dad. They thought that their parents had been through so much with the scandal, and mom had said that they were trying to work things out. They couldn't understand it but no matter how they wanted things different, Alicia was adament. 

On Saturday, Alicia shows up right on time and rings the door bell. Kalinda opens the door with a, "Hi Alicia, come in." "Hi Kalinda, what is that heavenly smell?" "That is Sadia, it comes from the Indian deli down town." Will wonders never cease," says Alicia, "you have a table and chairs, oh my, even a couch." "Yeah, I decided against Japanese cuisine. And I figured if everything went well today that perhaps this could be the start of a new tradition for us.

"Come sit at the table," she said as she pours them each a glass of wine. "Here, let me serve you, this is all vegetarian and these are actually the kind of dishes that my mom would have prepared for my wedding. You are the only one who knows anything about my parents so I thought to honor them with this meal."

They ate in relative silence, saving the talk for after their meal.

"How about some dessert? I could offer you some black rice with rasins and sweet cream, or ice cream if you prefer?"

"No, I'm good thanks, everything was lovely, I think I'm going to enjoy our new weekend tradition."

"Alicia, take your wine and go sit on the couch, I'll be over as soon as I clear the table." "Oh no," says Alicia, "you go sit on the couch and I'll clear the table, I want no argument. "

"Okay," Kalinda says, "no argument here." It was great watching Alicia puttering around her apartment. Kalinda had a stupid grin on her face...'this is surreal,' she thought, 'like a dream come true'.

"All done clearing," Alicia says as she sits on the couch. "What shall we talk about?" 

Kalinda takes Alicia's hand in both of hers and says. "The other day I explained some things in a way that could be open to interpretation and I wanted to make them clearer."

"Okay," says Alicia, "which things are you talking about here?"

With down cast eyes, Kalinda moved the pads of her thumbs over the back of Alicia's hand.

"The other day I told you that I loved you and in the next breath I said you were my best friend. It could be interpreted as either I love you as a friend or as more than a friend. What are your thoughts about that? Which interpretation would you prefer?" She raises her eyes to Alicia's and waits for her reply.

"Wow. You don't pull any punches do you. Give me a moment, okay."

There was silence for such a long time, but Alicia didn't pull hand away so Kalinda didn't lose heart. Finally she felt compelled to speak.

"I'm sorry Alicia, I don't mean to put you on the spot, I love you as a friend and I'm in love with you as more than a friend. I just wanted to know how you feel about that because I didn't want my expressions of love to be...inappropriate. I want them to be in accordance with your wishes."

Alicia has an unfocused look on her face and is still silent.

Kalinda smiles, "Did we just switch personalities here, now I'm the one telling you everything and you have become the private one.

"Kalinda, this is incredibly hard for me to answer, I have other people I have to consider, my kids mainly. I can tell you that I do love you and that my feelings are definitely in the 'more', department but I don't know that I'm prepared to act on them, that's my conundrum. 

"For now can we just keep our expressions to words and leave the actions for a time when we both consider the 'more part' appropriate?

With a wide smile Kalinda says, "Sure we can my friend. How about you come back again next week, for the sake of tradition, for lunch and more talk?"

Laughing, Alicia says, "Okay friend, it's a date."

That night alone in bed, Alicia's mind wanders, she puzzles out how strange it is to have discovered love through a confession of betrayal.

Thinking back on this evenings discussion with Zack and Grace she can't help smiling. She had told them that she wanted to start dating and who she was interested in. She thought that they would reject the idea of two women in love but it seems that all they wanted was to make sure she was happy.

On friday, Alicia pops her head into Kalinda's office. "Oh Kalinda, I've come to the conclusion...actions speak louder than words, see you tomorrow." She leaves Kalinda with her chin hanging close to her navel.

On Saturday, after their lunch, Kalinda takes Alicia's hands and tells her, "Alicia, my mother wrote something that she wanted me to recite to the love of my life before we would start our new life together. If these are her original words or the words of one of the msny holy men she was always quoting, I don't know. But they are the sentiments she wanted me to convey.

"Alicia, Every thought of my mind, every emotion of my heart, every movement of my being, every feeling and every sensation, each cell of my body, each drop of my blood - all, all is yours absolutely, yours without reserve, you can decide my life or my death, my happiness or my sorrow, my pleasure or my pain. Whatever you do with me, whatever comes to me from you, I will accept without hesitation, without reservation...You are my true love, the one I always hoped I would find."

Kalinda then leads her into the next room. The scent of orchids fill the air. The bed has been turned down and the sheets are strewn with orchid petals.

"Oh Kalinda, it smells wonderful, where did you find so many orchids?"

"Shhh, shhh", she says as her thumb gently smooths over Alicia's lips. They kiss softly, tenderly, mouths open to accept the probing caress of sensual desire


End file.
